Russells advise starting these in large nucs or requeening colonies so the queens can utilize their potential because that way they have the existing nurse bees to raise the eggs they are capable of laying. I didn't listen and put them in small splits that were still building at the end of the season. I am waiting to see how they winter. The colonies went into our long winter with over 100 pounds of stores but If they don't shut down brood laying that will not be enough. I will be weighing them again the first warm day my wife doesn't preempt. They did build up well with end of June 2 frame splits completely filling two deeps with bees and honey with no supplimental feeding. One went queenless and was tipped over by a cow after requeened so is not included in that general statement. I have twenty pounds of dry sugar on top of it so that one is still part of the study I guess.

Just like looking at the seed catalog and kinds of chickens to get in the spring! Fond farmboy memories but same same now on my beek fetish. I will see you sunkist and I have 10 moonbeams ordered! Nanny nanny! That is a joke son!

Just got my first SK cordovan on Friday morning and introduced her by noon... Checked back today and she was still in the cage but the hillbilly bees in my hive had built comb on part on her screen but had not gotten her free... I removed the screen and allowed all to access the hive... Hope it all works out... The hive has been queenless for several weeks and I supplemented with a frame of mixed brood/ honey twice... She's a beauty, if she does well, I'll start switching... I'll check back on Sat or Sunday to see if she has taken her throne and post an update... I'm still kinda new at all this, but love my ladies... They call me "sugar daddy"...

Could be but I would wait a couple more days just to be sure. I feel for ya. Is this the only colony you have?

No, I have two others and two packages coming on Sunday... Russell Apiaries are attempting to help and I am going to find a frame of brood/larva/eggs in my best hive and install it in my failing hive to determine for sure if I am queenless... If so, they have indicated that they will send me an replacement queen quickly... I think that I'm sold on Russell and if she works as well as everyone says, I'll requeen another hive or two and get some of my beekeepers club members into them...

My Cordovan SunKist arrived this morning and she's a beauty! I made a split (2nd this week) from a strong hive today about noon and although I normally leave the new colony queen less for 24 hours before introducing a new queen I tried something different with the SunKist queen.

I've read several posts from people describing how easily their bees accept these queens and decided to find out for myself. I took the queen out to the new hive about 5:30 and laid her cage on top of the frames to see how the bees would react to her. They immediately crawled all over the cage with no signs of aggression and several started fanning right away.

I went ahead and put the cage between 2 top bars and the bees seemed very happy and calm. They took to her much easier than the Italian queen I gave to a split 2 days ago.